| [Enter FALSTAFF and BARDOLPH] | |
| FALSTAFF | Bardolph, I say,-- |
| BARDOLPH | Here, sir. |
| FALSTAFF | Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in't. |
| [Exit BARDOLPH] | |
| Have I lived to be carried in a basket, like a barrow of butcher's offal, and to be thrown in the Thames? Well, if I be served such another trick, I'll have my brains ta'en out and buttered, and give them to a dog for a new-year's gift. The rogues slighted me into the river with as little remorse as they would have drowned a blind bitch's puppies, fifteen i' the litter: and you may know by my size that I have a kind of alacrity in sinking; if the bottom were as deep as hell, I should down. I had been drowned, but that the shore was shelvy and shallow,--a death that I abhor; for the water swells a man; and what a thing should I have been when I had been swelled! I should have been a mountain of mummy. |
|
| [Re-enter BARDOLPH with sack] | |
| BARDOLPH | Here's Mistress Quickly, sir, to speak with you. |
| FALSTAFF | Let me pour in some sack to the Thames water; for my belly's as cold as if I had swallowed snowballs for pills to cool the reins. Call her in. |
| BARDOLPH | Come in, woman! |
| [Enter MISTRESS QUICKLY] | |
| MISTRESS QUICKLY | By your leave; I cry you mercy: give your worship good morrow. |
| FALSTAFF | Take away these chalices. Go brew me a pottle of sack finely. |
| BARDOLPH | With eggs, sir? |
| FALSTAFF | Simple of itself; I'll no pullet-sperm in my brewage. |
| [Exit BARDOLPH] How now! |
|
| MISTRESS QUICKLY | Marry, sir, I come to your worship from Mistress Ford. |
| FALSTAFF | Mistress Ford! I have had ford enough; I was thrown into the ford; I have my belly full of ford. |
| MISTRESS QUICKLY | Alas the day! good heart, that was not her fault: she does so take on with her men; they mistook their erection. |
| FALSTAFF | So did I mine, to build upon a foolish woman's promise. |
| MISTRESS QUICKLY | Well, she laments, sir, for it, that it would yearn your heart to see it. Her husband goes this morning a-birding; she desires you once more to come to her between eight and nine: I must carry her word quickly: she'll make you amends, I warrant you. |
| FALSTAFF | Well, I will visit her: tell her so; and bid her think what a man is: let her consider his frailty, and then judge of my merit. |
| MISTRESS QUICKLY | I will tell her. |
| FALSTAFF | Do so. Between nine and ten, sayest thou? |
| MISTRESS QUICKLY | Eight and nine, sir. |
| FALSTAFF | Well, be gone: I will not miss her. |
| MISTRESS QUICKLY | Peace be with you, sir. |
| [Exit] | |
| FALSTAFF | I marvel I hear not of Master Brook; he sent me word to stay within: I like his money well. O, here he comes. |
| [Enter FORD] | |
| FORD | Bless you, sir! |
| FALSTAFF | Now, master Brook, you come to know what hath passed between me and Ford's wife? |
| FORD | That, indeed, Sir John, is my business. |
| FALSTAFF | Master Brook, I will not lie to you: I was at her house the hour she appointed me. |
| FORD | And sped you, sir? |
| FALSTAFF | Very ill-favoredly, Master Brook. |
| FORD | How so, sir? Did she change her determination? |
| FALSTAFF | No, Master Brook; but the peaking Cornuto her husband, Master Brook, dwelling in a continual 'larum of jealousy, comes me in the instant of our encounter, after we had embraced, kissed, protested, and, as it were, spoke the prologue of our comedy; and at his heels a rabble of his companions, thither provoked and instigated by his distemper, and, forsooth, to search his house for his wife's love. |
| FORD | What, while you were there? |
| FALSTAFF | While I was there. |
| FORD | And did he search for you, and could not find you? |
| FALSTAFF | You shall hear. As good luck would have it, comes in one Mistress Page; gives intelligence of Ford's approach; and, in her invention and Ford's wife's distraction, they conveyed me into a buck-basket. |
| FORD | A buck-basket! |
| FALSTAFF | By the Lord, a buck-basket! rammed me in with foul shirts and smocks, socks, foul stockings, greasy napkins; that, Master Brook, there was the rankest compound of villanous smell that ever offended nostril. |
| FORD | And how long lay you there? |
| FALSTAFF | Nay, you shall hear, Master Brook, what I have suffered to bring this woman to evil for your good. Being thus crammed in the basket, a couple of Ford's knaves, his hinds, were called forth by their mistress to carry me in the name of foul clothes to Datchet-lane: they took me on their shoulders; met the jealous knave their master in the door, who asked them once or twice what they had in their basket: I quaked for fear, lest the lunatic knave would have searched it; but fate, ordaining he should be a cuckold, held his hand. Well: on went he for a search, and away went I for foul clothes. But mark the sequel, Master Brook: I suffered the pangs of three several deaths; first, an intolerable fright, to be detected with a jealous rotten bell-wether; next, to be compassed, like a good bilbo, in the circumference of a peck, hilt to point, heel to head; and then, to be stopped in, like a strong distillation, with stinking clothes that fretted in their own grease: think of that,--a man of my kidney,--think of that,--that am as subject to heat as butter; a man of continual dissolution and thaw: it was a miracle to scape suffocation. And in the height of this bath, when I was more than half stewed in grease, like a Dutch dish, to be thrown into the Thames, and cooled, glowing hot, in that surge, like a horse-shoe; think of that,--hissing hot,--think of that, Master Brook. |
| FORD | In good sadness, I am sorry that for my sake you have sufferd all this. My suit then is desperate; you'll undertake her no more? |
| FALSTAFF | Master Brook, I will be thrown into Etna, as I have been into Thames, ere I will leave her thus. Her husband is this morning gone a-birding: I have received from her another embassy of meeting; 'twixt eight and nine is the hour, Master Brook. |
| FORD | 'Tis past eight already, sir. |
| FALSTAFF | Is it? I will then address me to my appointment. Come to me at your convenient leisure, and you shall know how I speed; and the conclusion shall be crowned with your enjoying her. Adieu. You shall have her, Master Brook; Master Brook, you shall cuckold Ford. |
| [Exit] | |
| FORD | Hum! ha! is this a vision? is this a dream? do I sleep? Master Ford awake! awake, Master Ford! there's a hole made in your best coat, Master Ford. This 'tis to be married! this 'tis to have linen and buck-baskets! Well, I will proclaim myself what I am: I will now take the lecher; he is at my house; he cannot 'scape me; 'tis impossible he should; he cannot creep into a halfpenny purse, nor into a pepper-box: but, lest the devil that guides him should aid him, I will search impossible places. Though what I am I cannot avoid, yet to be what I would not shall not make me tame: if I have horns to make one mad, let the proverb go with me: I'll be horn-mad. |
| [Exit] |